Future Talent for Our Industry: Invitation to CPI Webinar

At our February SPA Conference, an inspiring panel discussion featured two Gen Z students who shared their views on apprenticeships and career opportunities. Their honest and thoughtful insights resonated strongly with an audience of sheet plant owners, managers, and industry suppliers.

Since then, the SPA Committee has been exploring practical ways to help our members attract future talent into the corrugated sector.

We are pleased to share below an invitation from the Confederation of Paper Industries (CPI) to attend an upcoming webinar focused on engaging with local schools.  For this initiative to gain real traction in our sector, the SPA believes that each member company should consider appointing a Future Talent Ambassador - someone to champion school and student engagement at a local level.  The CPI webinar will be a valuable opportunity for this Ambassador and anyone in your business interested in connecting with young people and promoting the industry’s skills and opportunities.  Here is the invitation:

“Engaging local schools – ‘ambassador training’ webinar on 3 June 

We can all agree that it is important to engage the younger generation with our industry.  Not only are there great opportunities to raise awareness of the superb environmental credentials of cardboard packaging, it can also be an opportunity to promote the industry or explore local recruitment for your organisation.  So, we are encouraging SPA member companies to get out and about, communicating with their local schools, to inform the next generation about the opportunities that the (corrugated) cardboard industry can provide.

It’s not always an easy task to promote cardboard when compared to high profile sectors such as IT, pharma, automotive or aeronautical.  And that’s why we have arranged a webinar (to take place on 3rd June) that will look at how industry led schools outreach activity can bring real benefits, through the creation of a bespoke ‘ambassador’ programme.  The webinar will also be reviewing the new Not Just Lab Coats careers platform website, established to encourage youth engagement with the science-based industries.

Ideally suited for anyone interested in the concept of engaging with younger people to promote skills, this webinar will focus on why (and how) industry can take the lead.  Colleagues attending will come to understand the role of outreach and how it can benefit your business and the broader industry; how to address the common obstacles and find solutions to outreach implementation; and understand the role of an ‘ambassador programme’ and how it could work for them.

For those that don’t engage with schools yet, we encourage participation to promote your organisation and/or the positive messages around cardboard; for those that already do, it’s an opportunity to think about how such activity might be streamlined and improved.

Registration for the event is available HERE “